This invention relates to the field of electronic communications. More particularly, a system, apparatus, and methods are provided for automatically recalling or retrieving a past message from the device used to send the message.
Users of mobile computing and communication devices rely on those devices to exchange many types of messages with users of other devices. A significant percentage of those messages convey some type of media, such as a photograph, a video clip, and/or an audio recording. Depending on the application or utility logic used to transport the message to its recipient(s), a copy of some of the message (e.g., just the media content, the media content and any accompanying textual message) may be stored permanently or for a relatively long period of time by some intermediate entity (e.g., a communication service provider, a provider of the application logic).
Some communication service providers and application providers, however, do not retain messages or their media permanently or semi-permanently. To do so would require an enormous investment in electronic storage. Archiving, backing-up, and/or providing redundant backup (e.g., with a Redundant Array of Independent Disks or RAID) would add even more expense.
An application provider or service provider that does not provide unlimited and/or fault-tolerant data storage may therefore be unable to deliver a message, or media content it conveys, in the case of a device failure, if the message or its media was discarded before it could be delivered to a recipient, or if some other error occurs.